Many activities of daily living are difficult not only for the physically handicapped, but also for others whose full range of motion is either minimally restricted or difficult to achieve. Such activities as dressing and undressing are extremely difficult for persons who cannot bend forwardly at the waist, move either or both of their lower extremeties or use one of their upper extremeties, the latter due to disability or restriction of the use of one or more of the shoulder, upper arm, forearm, wrist or hand.
For instance, as simple, a task as donning or removing a stocking is difficult enough one-handed, but nearly impossible if one cannot easily bend forwardly at the middle or move the leg either in its entirety or at the knee. Persons who have restricted movement of the lower spine due to age, disease, traumer or obesity find it difficult to reach their feet even if the hip and knee joints are mobile and the leg musculature functional. Even if fully flexible at the waist, it is difficult to reach the feet if both the hips and knees are not fully mobile and the leg musculature functional. Any combination of disabilities of the lower spine, upper spine, hip and knee joints and leg back or abdominal muscles can make such tasks as donning and removing shoes, stockings, hose and trousers extremely difficult even with fully functioning upper extremeties. If, in addition, one of the upper extremeties has limited function or range of motion, the problem is compounded in the extreme. Achieving mastery of activities of daily living, maintenance of the home and usefulness in the work environment is essential to both physical and psychological rehabilitation.
A wide variety of adaptive devices have been devised for the physically handicapped. However, in many instances they are useful only under limited circumstances and not useful for a wide variety of physical disabilities for a wide variety of purposes. No singular device is available to assist the handicapped or physically restricted to don and remove shoes, stockings, hose, pantyhose, underwear, trousers and retrieve aforesaid from the floor, shelves, etc., including my previous invention U.S. Pat. No. 4,620,737, Nov. 4, 1986.